Hi, this game nearly broke my computer.

[queenelise9830]

I'm actually being serious here, my OS was repeatedly blackscreening and rebooting itself without even opening the game after several such crashes during gameplay. Finally it just randomly stopped crashing, and I uninstalled Stellaris. I should hope this is just a really nasty bug, and not a virus like my dad thinks... Paradox, can you fix this amazing game so it's actually playable please? I really like the gameplay, but I won't play it again while any of the blackscreening issues exist.

[_ALuX_]

PC Specs?

[queenelise9830]

OS: Windows 8.1
Graphics Driver: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760
CPU: Intel(R) Core i7-4760 CPU @ 3.60GHz

From Steam's System Information display.

[queenelise9830]

For the first ~10 hrs of gameplay it worked fine.

[mister_lobos]

it's not the game...
99% chance your computer would have started having the same issues if you had been playing another game at that time as well.

the game itself is obviously playable, since there is literally thousands and thousands of us playing it (i've had it running all day, even while alt tabbed out and doing other things) i've recently seen up to about 20,000 people "currently playing" according to steam... and i'd easily bet there is actually more then that.

there are several steps you can take to try and find the issue however.

first:
right click on an empty part of your taskbar... (or the clock itself) and the pop up menu should have "Task Manger" near the bottom. click "task manager"
it should bring up a screen that shows you all the programs that are currently running.. which unfortunately with each version of windows it is more and more useless junk... SOO..
click the tab at the top of the device manager that says "startup"
see how many things are listed there.... the less the better.. i have 3 things listed but they are ALL disabled. :)

the more that's there the more problems you will have... the longer it'll take for your computer to start, the slower it will do everything and more likely it is to start having issues like you described.

also there are even some crappy viruses that will even appear there IF they are on your system.
if you use an active virus scanner it may also appear there.. and yes it will also slow down your computer. but i wouldn't recommend disabling that.. i usually suggest uninstalling them tho, they are almost always more trouble then they are worth.

start there and let me know what you find and myself and probably some others can come back with more.

[queenelise9830]

I've been playing other games for years on this computer with no issues. And after uninstalling Stellaris, it's back to smooth sailing. But I will try what you've said.

[mister_lobos]

the only reason the game itself should cause a problem is if your harddrive is almost full and installing stellaris brought it to the point that windows can't do it's things because it has no file space to use.

[queenelise9830]

Originally posted by mister_lobos:

the only reason the game itself should cause a problem is if your harddrive is almost full and installing stellaris brought it to the point that windows can't do it's things because it has no file space to use.

Well, my harddrive *is* almost full. I've been wondering why it's filling up so fast actually, I delete my temporary internet files and it's still fuller than it should be so IDEK what's taking so much space...

[queenelise9830]

Hey, I cleared up about 10 more gigs by deleting games I never play and it still didn't work. I'm writing a negative review about this.

[Captain Conundrum]

What is your graphics driver? You listed the card itself but did not mention if the driver is current. The game itself came cause what you are describing unless there is also something else wrong like an old driver, damaged hard drive, bad memory, etc.

You're free to write a negative review of the game because it isn't working with your specific system configuration, but the odds are good that the reason for it is something on your end.

[Tex]

While the game has its flaws with performance, crashing computers is not one of its problems.

Something is whack with your system configuration, I 100% guarantee it.

[Stormwind]

Yeah with thousands of people playing and this happening only to you, odds are extremely high its a system problem. I have I think about 70 hours or so and not even 1 crash.

[Stormwind]

If you have any mods installed, try stripping all of them out and see if it still crashes.

[★Jaw★]

Originally posted by kingedward9830:

Hey, I cleared up about 10 more gigs by deleting games I never play and it still didn't work. I'm writing a negative review about this.

"Grrr my computer is breaking down, so I'm going to lay blame on something that has nothing to do with it, but I think that it does, grrr me so angry!"

[Stormwind]

He says its only this game that crashes. I suspect some combination of mods is at work.

[Zane87]

Originally posted by kingedward9830:

I'm actually being serious here, my OS was repeatedly blackscreening and rebooting itself without even opening the game after several such crashes during gameplay. Finally it just randomly stopped crashing, and I uninstalled Stellaris. I should hope this is just a really nasty bug, and not a virus like my dad thinks... Paradox, can you fix this amazing game so it's actually playable please? I really like the gameplay, but I won't play it again while any of the blackscreening issues exist.

If your dad thinks there is a virus in an official game download from steam, then you should tell him to stfu and educate himself.


There is no "virus" from the developers. If there is one on your HDD, it's from other sources.
Also, who uses viruses nowadays anyway? It's all Trojans, spyware and Ransomware now.


The black screen and rebooting could be a sign of faulty hardware. Either a too hot GPU/CPU or the PSU not being high enough to supply enough power to all components under stress.
(Of course that's just the probable candidates, it could be another component too, a selective stresstest with logging would be a good idea to check)


How old is your rig? Can you provide details. Also, what's aside of Stellaris the most GPU/CPU demanding game you can play.